Bright Blue Day

The CS Guinea Pig

16th August 2018

Josie McLachlan

Some of you may have come across me before, but I’ll introduce myself. My name is Josie McLachlan, I am a BU Advertising student that thankfully Bright Blue Day took a chance 9 months ago. I’ll set the scene for you…

How it all started

It was reaching the end of September, and I had unfortunately been hit with the bad luck stick and had been left without a placement as of yet for my placement year – not pointing the finger, but a certain London agency had let me down. As you can imagine this was pretty stressful, my poor parents I think were more stressed then me. But, I wasn’t going to give up, I had a degree to get! So, I applied to goodness knows where/everywhere – and thankfully a certain founder of BBD (name drop – Jonathan Clark) put me in touch with Jessica Williams (our CSD); who gave me a week’s work experience here.

So, the week went past and I managed to impress the team enough to get a 3 month placement! Then it got real good to say the least, I got to stay at BBD for the last 9 months! Extension after extension, and I’m allowed to shout about that because I worked pretty damn hard to get to where I am now. But that’s what being a part of BBD is about, you’ve got to work really hard and show your passion or you’re just a bit meh – and therefore don’t have that blue blood. I was actually the first intern to take action in the Client Services team here, and I hope I’ve paved the path for future placementers – well … not too much as I want to come back to BBD real soon! But yes I was a CS tester guinea pig that learned fast and survived all sorts that I’d like to chat to you about, if you fancy a listen.

What have I learnt? Classic question.

Right, where to begin… In terms of skills that I have learnt from my BBDers, I now can turn out an Analytics report asap rocky, and know how to promote via LinkedIn and Twitter – may sound easyish, but once you deal with the new campaign manager I wouldn’t be so sure… And not to toot my own horn but these skills helped me

work with Anthony on running Visa’s global social campaign for the Mobile World Congress convention in Barcelona #TOOTTHETOOT.

I can crack Umbraco (Hammerson), I can WordPress (William Russell), Demandbase, Dashboards, Synergist, WTF even is it all – I don’t really know but I can do it! BBD have pushed me and filled me with more knowledge then I am even sure I can hold! But it’s more then what I’ve learnt, I’ve also gained some pretty invaluable stuff; bloody good friends and a ton of confidence – can you tell…

About those BBD friends.

It’s so easy to say ‘oh, everyone was really nice’, but I don’t want to say that. Obviously they are nice, but nice is boring/pants, they are more than nice – I’ll use three words; AWESOME, BAD-ASS, HILAROUS. Actually, four words, SUPPORTIVE, is another big one. The friends I have made here I know aren’t going anywhere soon, I’m not going to let them!

These friends have cheered me on and brought me biscuits/wine when I’ve needed it most. I remember my biggest BBD project I worked on – how could I forget, it was probably also the most stressed I have been here. But stress is a good thing, it means you give a monkeys. Also, to say it wasn’t stressful would be a blatant lie when you and your team (Jamie our video guru – main hero here) have to build a 20 minute video presentation for the CEO Charlotte Hogg of Visa, to present at Money 2020, in 2 weeks. But we all did it, and do you know what, it reflected the BBD people a bit…

BAD-ASS – it was done in tight time frames because they turned to us after seeing our other recent Visa video work for the Visa Date Centre #badass

HILAROUS – unfortunately talking about how amazing paying with Visa is doesn’t swim so well when Visa crashed the Friday before… But Charlotte still smashed it with grace and ease.

Another big thank you for everything.

If you’re still reading, you may be my Mum or my best friend Charlie in Switzerland – but I hope you’ve got to learn about how lucky I’ve been and what I’ve learnt so far. I haven’t even got onto all the other internal BBD triumphs, 200 followers on Instagram, Pancake Day, Wet-Feb quiz, the list goes on. That confidence I mentioned earlier also really comes from all the responsibility I’ve been given, and again, I’m so grateful for that. If you told me a year ago I would have done everything I’ve done on my placement, I would tell you to jog on mate – I’ve even got a paddle board now! The south has really sunk into me.

Kinda soppy bit…

In summary, it’s been really, really great and even as I’m writing this I’m getting a pretty emotional. I’m not good with this kind of thing, I’m used to living away from home (Rugby, seen as the North down here…) but having to say bye to another family when you really don’t want to is hard.